Äventyr

Den där kanotturen vi ska på den 5 juni ska bli riktigt kul. Vi har hört mycket gott om den, och på Tripadvisor kan man läsa den ena lyriska berättelsen efetr den andra. Förutom EN dam, som verkar ha haft en tuff dag i kanoten. Men hennes berättlese gör nästan att jag ser fram emot turen MER (vi gillar lite äventyr i vår familj).

Här är damens berättelse:
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If you are looking for a thrilling nature experience this is the trip for you, if you are crazy. Please keep in mind, that although nothing terrible happened on our trip, I would never do it again. Here's why...We were NOT prepared for what we saw and the website made it seem like a cute self-guided canoe escape.

We took trip #1 and saw PLENTY of wildlfe which was cool, and you are truly one with nature--no other people around, no signs of civilization, no friendly markers to let you know which way to go, and HUGE, I mean HUGE alligators 7-10 footers just feet away from your canoe.

We first saw 3-4 footers and that was pretty exhilarating and even kind of neat. But then we looked up and every now and then saw GIANTS. I consider myself a wildlife lover and thought this trip would be a cool experience. My heart almost exploded when I saw the first gator that was around 7ft very close to us-No barriers, no nothing! Call me a coward, but I never felt so scared in my life. Just the fact that it was dead silent and no one around but you and the gators and you are navigating through tight, I mean tight turns. First of all you must work as a team when manuevering a canoe-(we were first time canoers but had a lot of experience kayaking).

We felt we did a pretty good job but there were times when there were forks in the river and we were faced with TOUGH decisions-like, do we go through the tight squeeze of lily pads where we don't know what lay beneath or do we squeeze through the fallen down tree where we can't see around the bend. There were alligators on the sides, and on logs, and in the water and sometimes your only choice was to squeeze through openings that barely fit the canoe and sometimes on a turn. Sometimes there was nothing when you squeezed through, sometimes there was a large alligator that you couldn't see until you were upon it.

At one point an alligator ahead of us ran into the water and then went under-then we couldn't see it and that was even more terrifying. We passed tons of baby alligators on a log that was 2 feet away from our canoe and sure enough the big mother was right behind the log with more babies sitting on her back. On the Discovery Channel, I would have said, "Isn't that amazing" "What an awesome sight to see," but in real life, my reaction was "Oh My God,-(a few curse words), then not being able to breathe as we kept our oars still and let the slow moving current take us past, praying the mother didn't move. Now, the alligators never hurt us or followed us or anything like that, and like the guide said, they were probably more afraid of us, but it was just toooooooo close for comfort , too intense, and not funny.

With no one around and no way out but to continue (with 2 hours to go), and no numbered markers to give you some direction, and the current pushing you forward in to the tight turns against the banks, and the alligators around you, my heart still races as to how quickly we could have been a story on Bay News 9. Call it over-reacting, I call it knowing your place and not poking your nose in the beast's territory.

P.S. We learned later that if we continued on past the pickup for trip #1 we would have seen the "bigger gators."
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Jag tror inte att denna dam var speciellt van vid Florida, och de var dessutom ute på floden under en torrperiod om jag förstod det rätt, då vattennivå när väldigt låg. Som tur är för oss så är vattnet ganska högt nu tack vare en blöt vår!